Three weeks ago, I started fencing again.  I fenced throughout high school, and won a good deal more than I lost.  My form was poor, and relied too much on explosive action and not enough on technique.  I fenced with leaps, with snake-speed, with techniques borrowed from my Wado-Ryu Karate training.  In short, I fenced like a young man.

I didn’t set foot on a strip for nine years after high school, but recently, thanks to a coupon and a need to have a reason to keep myself in shape, I began taking classes at a local studio.  Holding a sword for the first time after an eight year absence feels like settling into your own bed – you know this place, you know this feeling.  In bouts with the other students, I began fencing like a young man, jumping up and down the strip, relying on speed and power.

Now, I’m not as fast as when I was seventeen.  Nor am I nearly so resilient.  After two weeks of leaping and lunging, I woke to find that I couldn’t walk without a limp.  I’d pulled or strained one of the tiny muscles in my hip that helps one recover from a lunge, and even a normal pace caused pain.  I worried that I might have to skip fencing this last week.  I cursed myself for forgetting that I’m not a teenager any more.  Grow up, I thought.

I went to fencing.  I hobbled through warmups.  I stretched, I conserved my energy.  And when time came to fence, I fought down my instincts to press the attack, and fenced like an old man.

I lunged rarely, and only when certain of victory.  I parried and I riposted.  I gave ground in a slow and calculated fashion.  I struck exposed wrists, upthrust arms.  I sidestepped attacks and hit undefended flanks.  I controlled my opponents’ blades, and guided them off-line to create openings for myself.

I won five bouts in a row, and lost none that evening.

My form remains horrible, and half the tricks I tried I got away with only because I was more experienced, even though I hadn’t fenced in years.  My point, I have a point, is more that just because a certain way of fencing, or moving, or writing, or thinking, works well when you’re a teenager, doesn’t mean it still works even in your twenties – people grow, change, develop.  That’s okay.  If we don’t respect these transformations, we invite pain; if we do, we can earn victory and joy.

I hope I can keep this in mind as my hip heals.  Otherwise I’ll be jumping up and down the strip like a crazed kangaroo again, and nobody wants that.